Yaowarat!

Short Version:

Train morning, and a trip back in time, to some manipulation and some crazy foods

Long Version:

'Twas a noisy night; steel wheels aren't silent at the best of times, but when they're being pushed across track that isn't particularly uniform, the chatter gets pretty loud. Almost loud enough to drown out the sound of someone whose inner ear had failed to cope with sleeping in a bouncing, swaying berth, awakening them – and me – in the wee small hours for repeated and violent retching (them, not me). It is, of course, entirely possible that they had a viral, bacterial, or amoebic infection – all of which have been known to occur here in SE Asia, with varying degrees of catastrophic output – but I'm assuming an inner ear issue, on the grounds that we inhaled copious amounts of street-food in Bangkok's Chinatown, and (so far) suffered no ill effects. But that's a tale that probably needs to be told in more detail...

~~~~~~~~ wavy lines indicate travelling backwards through time ~~~~~~~~

There are massage places EVERYWHERE in the Sukhumvit area of Bangkok, where we've been staying. Some of these are “massage” places, but many are legitimate, therapeutic, no Happy Ending, actual Thai massage places, and everything we've read says we really ought to be on the receiving end on a pretty much daily basis. Bank balance says that frequency might be slightly over the top, but there was no way we weren't going to go at least once. So Lovely Wife got on the phone and made a booking for us at one of the big, renowned, multiple-branch massage enterprises, and we set off with very little time to spare, first in a tuk-tuk and then on foot, to what turned out to be a large and well-appointed building with a significant amount of well-heeled foot traffic (sorry) passing in and out of its portals. Inside was air-conditioned and stylish, and we drank fancy-packaged chilled water in the fancy-designer-designed waiting area until the woman with the microphone called out what Lovely Wife managed to interpret as a mangled version of our names, and we set off in the wake of two short, round, middle-aged Thai women named – according to their badges – Dokmai and Yupa.

Dokmai was older, and rounder, while Yupa laughed more, although that may have been at least partly because Dokmai – I assume – won whatever game of chance they played to determine who massaged whom, and so Yupa was on Puppet-manipulation duty.

The massage was quite different to the sports-type massages we're used to getting, with more use of masseuse bodyparts for leverage, more standing-on the recipient, and more clothes worn. No oily flesh-rubbing here; we were given special “I'm getting a massage” outfits to wear; mine in shades of blue, Lovely Wife's red and pink.

Yupa used mainly elbows. Not sure about Dokmai.

Yupa found many things amusing, particularly bright-colored kids-drawing tattoos and complaininess about what she obviously considered minimal pressure.

Yupa left me feeling great, and unable to walk properly, temporarily. Yupa found that amusing too. So did Dokmai. And Lovely Wife, and all of the other HealthLand staff.

So it's 5pm, and we're done, and on our way to the nearby Metro (subway) station. We never quite got around to eating lunch, so we're ravenous, and ignoring the smells emanating from the cluster of food carts around the subway entrance is not an option.

It's possible that the vendors have never before seen spicy-pork-on-a-stick disappear into a pair of gullets quite so quickly.

The subway spat us out at Hua Lamphuang, near the main railway station, which meant we had an opportunity to check the place out in advance of our upcoming trip while unencumbered by big bags and bikes, and then we were off, onwards, into Yaowarat, Bangkok's Chinatown.

Or we would be, if we'd paid attention to how to get there.

Found our way eventually, and commenced stuffing all manner of foods more-or-less delicious, and weird, and wonderful, into our faces while strolling through the very neon-enabled and very crowded streets and alleys. Favorites included the eggy pastry thing with condensed milk and some of the deep-fried unidentifiables from the toothless old lady. Didn't eat bird's-nest soup, or offal.

Did buy durian, the legendary love-it-or-loathe it fruit, banned from many air-conditioned buildings in Asia because of its pervasive and lingering smell and banned, as it turns out, from the Bangkok subway. Even a plastic-wrapped package is not allowed on the train. So we ate it outside the subway station, and it was... nothing special. Don't see what the fuss is about, to be honest.

And then we went home.

~~~~~~~~ wavy lines indicate travelling forward in time, but only as far as the present*~~~~~~~~

Some time during the night the mucus-beast had departed, leaving behind one slightly bedraggled (but still lovely) Lovely Wife, and so many soiled tissues that it looked like we'd had a tour bus full of post-sales-conference Chinese businessmen and their temporary companions visit us in the night-time for a Patpong-style mega-bukkakke** party. Someone had snuck in to our niche during the small hours and plugged in a hot liquid device but left no cups, so we sat and watched the sun rise over forested hills and limestone mountains sans caffeine until one of the friendly railway staff brought through the breakfast we'd ordered last night... chocolate cookies, some sliced apple, and... cups!

Before you go jumping to any conclusions, let me note a few points:

• This breakfast option was not something that I chose when Lovely Wife was not watching, this was a mutual decision
• It looked like the best option from a limited selection
• We didn't entirely realise that the chocolate cookies were actually cookies - biscuits for folks in the south - like you'd get in a packet from the supermarket.
• And not gourmet ones either.
• OK, scratch that, maybe it was just me that didn't understand; Lovely Wife says that “of course they were going to be like that, what else did you expect? The menu said cookies, these are cookies. You're a dufus.”
• Anyway, all we really wanted was the coffee, despite having a fair idea that it was going to be shitty.

Oh, and we have almost no Thai moneys left, pending a visit to an ATM - or, failing that, a Currency Exchange - which we will do later today in Chiang Mai, which we should see in about 2 hours.

* = , which is the past for you, because the only one reading this in the present is me, and you're not me. Probably. Depends on what you believe about how the world works, really. Some people would say that we're all one, which would make you me as well as you. Others would have you believe that one of us is real, and sleeping, and that everyone else is a dream construct, playing out their role in the slumber-narrative for as long as the napping continues but doomed to cease once waking happens. And then there are the ones that have an imaginary friend with supernatural powers... All a complete bunch of arse? Why yes, yes it is. 

** = If you don't already know, please don't look this up. You will be offended.